Life After: The Void

by Bryan Way

  “Anyone make New Year’s resolutions last night?”

  “Aren’t you not supposed to tell what they are?” Jake asks.

  “Isn’t that birthday wishes?”

  “I owe you all for two months.” Rob offers quickly.

  “I’m gonna save at least five of your asses this year.” Anderson says with a smirk.

  “I’m gonna save six.” Rich responds playfully.

  “Well, I think we need a written system to ration our supplies… I’d like to handle that.” Mursak adds.

  “Keep a more open mind, I guess?” Jake says.

  “To psychoanalyze all of you at least once.” Ally says with a devious grin.

  “Maybe I’ll double my headcount this year?” I offer teasingly.

  “I’ll do whatever I can to make this work.” Mel adds. A moment of silence follows. “Hel, what about you?”

  “Don’t believe in resolutions.”

  “Ohhhh… kay… how ‘bout you, Ellie?”

  “Monkey lions!”

  “…what about them?”

  “They get to be mine!”

  The group bursts into laughter, followed by the revelation that Jimmy would also like some monkey lions. As the two of them join forces to describe the beasts, glass is heard shattering from somewhere in the front of the school. Alpha team leaps up and runs to 218 to arm themselves, and as I grab my rifle, Anderson puts his hand on my shoulder.

  “Melee only.”

  “…what?” I respond.

  “We gotta start saving ammo.”

  “You wanna save ammo, or you wanna stay alive?”

  Anderson acquiesces, bringing his rifle as well. When the three of us have finished gearing up, Anderson leads us toward the gate and assesses the situation. “Looks like one, but it’s probably a few.” One by one, we descend the rope ladder, negotiate the door, and spill out along the side of the bus, attempting to remain quiet so the undead don’t head for the gate. Once clear of the bus, it’s quite apparent that Anderson’s estimation of their number was off by about thirty; one major detachment of undead have clustered around the school’s main entrance and managed to break a pane of glass in one of the doors, while another throng approaches from the street.

  This could have been much worse. Our biggest concern comes not from a large group huddled around one of our entrances, but from an unending string of single Zombies approaching from multiple directions. However, I have to wonder how a group this large managed to get this close to the school. The first assumption is always blind luck, but who’s to say this group of walking corpses wasn’t like us two weeks ago? What if one person in this cluster was bitten and hid it, and that’s why they’re all standing outside our fortress? What if they’re here because the alarms at DC cubed stopped?

  Suddenly, Jake cuts off from Anderson and me, slamming the hook of his damaged crowbar into the top of a naked male Zombie’s head before it can alert the others. Jake rejoins us as the throng from the street cuts left across the snowy grass, sandwiching us between them and the undead at the doors. The inbound group spreads out and splits in two, prompting Anderson to grab a rock and throw it at our closest combatant. While the swarm of undead struggle to organize, the three of us spread out in a triangle with two points facing the advancing corpses. The most eager and mobile of the group makes their way to the front, only to be cut down by Anderson and Jake. As the point of the triangle, my job is step in only when my compatriots are overwhelmed.

  The triangle moves away, drawing the undead toward our net; with two people covering half a field of vision and a third covering theirs, it’s quite difficult for the undead to gain a tactical advantage. Most of the time, they end up in a single-file line with the most mobile of the group filtering to the front so we can kill the most dangerous ones first. Jake and Anderson do most of the work, but I step in occasionally to lend a hand. Overall, this bunch doesn’t provide much of a challenge.

  “I love that attack plan.” Anderson grumbles through a smile as he rams the hook of his crowbar under the ribcage of his last victim; the sludgy pop of metal ripping into a chest cavity always makes my skin crawl. Anderson drags the corpse over to the library doors and the rest of the group follows suit by spearing their kills as well. Beta unit comes out through the library entrance, dragging the set of gym mats we use to ferry corpses behind them. Bull that he is, Anderson attaches the mats to carabiners fixed on his belt loops and drags the first batch of corpses to the pool himself.

  By the time Anderson returns with an empty mat, we’ve already loaded up another with corpses. He manfully attaches himself to the mat and begins dragging them back toward the pool. “You want any help with that?” I shout after him.

  “I’m good…”

  “How much chlorine does the pool have left?” Ally asks.

  “Well, it uses salt to generate chlorine with an electric current.” I reply indirectly.

  “How do you know that?”

  “I read the manual.”

  “So, just regular salt then?” Jake asks.

  “Yeah, but the quantities we need are ridiculous.”

  “How long will it hold out?”

  “…not enough to keep doing this for more than a year. Once the pool fills up we’re gonna need to cover it and hope whatever’s left masks the smell… assuming the pipes don’t corrode.”

  “Is that a big deal?” Ally asks.

  “Yeah… if it fails, the pipes fill with hydrogen and oxygen, then all it takes is a-fuck… FUCK!”

  Ten undead in well-appointed winter wear pop out of the brush at the edge of the parking lot entrance, scrambling and falling over each other before they right themselves and rush toward the school. We have only seconds until they are on top of us, so I run off toward the stockade with the assumption that we can gain a tactical advantage by having them negotiate the crashed vehicles. As I scale the hood of a sedan, Rich rips a ladder off the side of a truck and shouts for help. I understand him quicker than he can verbalize his plan.

  “Everyone grab on!” I shout, taking a position at the far left of the ladder. Having bolted through the library doors, Anderson grabs the far right. Everyone else joins us as we rush the undead with our arms outstretched, using the ladder as a combination of a ram and buffer. As the gap between us narrows, I realize that we stand the risk of everyone breaking their arms on impact.

  “Loosen up when we hit ‘em!” I shout. Three seconds later we make contact with the undead, downing them like bowling pins and stopping as Anderson swings the ladder out, rushing forward to knock down a few more. “Drop!” Rich shouts. We let go of the ladder and let the undead fight through it while we use our melee weapons to invalidate them. I kick two across the jaw when I see them struggling through the mess of metal, dispatching three with pistol shots to the head.

  I look up to see Anderson staring back at me with disgust while he finishes laying into one of the downed corpses. Rich rushes forward once he’s freed himself from the ladder, ducking down and standing up into one rushing assailant, using his attacker’s momentum to flip the body over his shoulder. Ally rushes in to take over once the defenseless corpse slams into the pavement while Rich frees a crowbar from a loop in his belt and spins it into the jaw of another just as it begins to stand up.

  “Jake!” Anderson shouts. Fear shocks my limbs when I see a woman against whom I won’t have time to defend myself. Before she can reach me, Jake leaps up and flips his legs out, placing a drop kick directly in her abdomen. While both parties scramble to their feet, Anderson pinches her against the pavement with the ladder.

  Jake rushes forth to take care of another shambling runner. Mursak and Ally leap up on the ladder with their melee weapons and synchronize a series of beatings punctuated by the silencing of a dissonant chorus of moans. To my left, Rich continues to parry his crowbar like a Jedi while Anderson rushes an advancing contingent of stiff walkers. Knowing he’s outmatched, I run in to join him.

  I tap my hand between
his shoulder blades so he knows I’m behind him; he pivots to the left and I turn right, ripping my katana free. My first swing sends a skull skyward before I kick the rest of the body away with my right leg, spinning left and sending my left foot into the frame of the next one, following up by immediately decapitating the one behind him.

  When I turn back, Anderson’s face is consumed by a rage so uncontrollable that his beard looks angry; taking on three at once, he wrestles his arms free of the closest one and blasts the assailant’s teeth out with a cross-check to the mouth, grabbing its waist and spinning its legs into the second one, releasing it to sail into the final body at the same moment he whips the crowbar over his head and destroys a corpse’s temple with a one-handed swing, finally marrying his hands together as he completes the turn and beats the skull of his prone second victim hard enough to send an aerosol gust of blood ten feet. I decapitate the only remaining corpse.

  As I hyperventilate, I see Anderson’s back as he breathes with his entire body, resembling a gorilla as he stares into corpse at his feet. “Is that it?” He asks. “Yeah…” I gasp. He continues his lurching inhalation before he screams. “YEAH!” With adrenaline having taken over, he kicks the body and pops a cigarette in his mouth as we return our focus to our compatriots. Feeding off of his high, I can’t help but feel that our walk back is in slow motion.

  “Solid hit, Rich…” Anderson grunts.

  “Huh?”

  “That check you threw? Flipping the dude over your shoulder? Straight-up decleater.”

  “…okay?”

  “You know…” Anderson huffs. “Like knocking someone out of their cleats?”

  Rich has a good laugh at this. Once we’ve had a moment to catch our breath, we proceed to spear the chest cavities of our victims and deposit them on gym mats before Anderson and Ally drag them back to the pool. Remaining outside, I observe that the snow has helped cover the liberal application of blood to the front yard while I take a few hits off my inhaler. Once the bodies have been removed, Anderson and I meet at the main entrance to survey the damage.

  “They broke windows on both sides… doesn’t look like they had any real chance of gettin’ in.” Anderson offers.

  “Putting those desks in was a stroke of genius,” I add. “But we can’t replace the windows. Shame it didn’t happen out back.”

  “There are two sets of doors… it doesn’t put us at a disadvantage… it’s just gonna be a bit draftier now.”

  “Well, it’s a metal frame, so we can’t exactly nail boards in it…”

  “Maybe just caulk up some cardboard.”

  “Works for me…”

  Before we can continue, I spot two more bodies shuffling in the middle of the street. “God dammit…” I rush forward before Anderson can follow, cutting both down quickly. Anderson joins me in enough time to crush their decapitated skulls with the crowbar. “We better finish or they’ll just keep coming.” He says, landing another blow. We drag our final victims through the library doors, through the gym, and finally to the pool, rolling the bodies into the deep end where they land on an accumulation of stiffs basting in a puddle of dark gray water. Underneath the top layer of relatively fresh corpses, the bodies are stacked three deep, and despite the chlorine, the stench is unbearable.

  Without saying anything, Anderson goes into the back room to work the pumps. I watch quietly as the water rushes in and fills the pool up to the noses of the latest arrivals. “Turn it off.” I shout. The flow ceases and Anderson walks out with a bottle of bleach. He jerks it forward, sending forth a plume across the tops of the corpses. The blood and chunks of rotted flesh then begin settling back down toward the bottom. “Missed one.” Anderson says softly, walking around the side. When I focus more intently on the bodies, I see a loner still writhing near the top.

  I walk over to assist Anderson, pulling a shepherd’s hook off the mounting by the bleachers. I guide the loop under our guest’s armpit and pull him up to the side with a great deal of effort. As his head lands on the edge of the pool, Anderson promptly smashes it with the crowbar. I ease him back down as Anderson kicks the chunks of skull and brain back into the pool before taking a spare towel to clean his shoe and the crowbar. After a moment, Jake enters.

  “What’s it look like out front?” Anderson asks him.

  “One walking down the street. We got the door sealed before he saw us, though… he kept moving.”

  “Then don’t mess with him. Keep an eye out.”

  Jake lingers in the door for a moment before walking out. Anderson and I stare into the corpse cesspool for a long time, totally speechless. I don’t think either of us can figure out why we’re so transfixed, and though the feeling of being trapped in a nightmare is familiar, I’ve never felt the sensation while this awake. In this state, I don’t try to reposition my body to alter my consciousness, but I still feel unsettled as my brain ping-pongs between the cycle of life and death, followed by another kind of life and death. Finally, Rich’s entrance provides enough of a jolt to wake me up.

  “Oseltamivir.” He says, reading from a piece of paper. “Also called Tamiflu.”

  “Is that English?” I ask.

  “That’s what Karen needs… that or Zanamivir, AKA Relenza. She thinks we can find the first one at a pharmacy.”

  “Fuck!” Anderson says immediately.

  “What?” I ask.

  “That’s the first place looters go.” He barks incredulously. “You can find food anywhere… how many places can you get prescription drugs?”

  “Have we missed any pharmacies?” Rich asks.

  “We’ve hit every store within five miles. Is she that bad?”

  “What about a doctor’s office?” I ask.

  “They don’t carry drugs there.” Rich admonishes. “That’s why they have pharmacies.”

  “Sorry, dad…” I grumble. “Then I guess we go farther.”

  “Where?” Anderson shouts. “You went to DC cubed, they didn’t have any drugs… they also didn’t have anything from the police station.”

  Anderson and I stay quiet while the implications of this sink in. If we didn’t take them, and the DC cubed group didn’t, someone else did. Did whoever took them stay put? If they’re here, where are they hiding? Is it possible that they lead the DC cubed group to us in an effort to thin out the competition? If we manage to find this mythical group, and they don’t kill us, will they be willing to trade drugs?

  “We organize a party…” Anderson says firmly. “We go in the morning. We don’t have a choice.” Stricken by the assertiveness of this plan, I limply follow him and Rich out of the pool enclosure. I listen to the two of them discuss the need to have a group meeting, but Anderson insists on repairing the windows at the front entrance. Refusing any help, he disappears for forty-five minutes and returns to find us waiting in 218 with the full assembly save for Karen, Ally, Jimmy, and Elena, the latter three having repaired to the courtyard. Rich opens the proceedings.

  “Okay… Karen’s not doing well… and all we can do is find the right drugs. I don’t think I’m alone when I say it’s worth the risk.”

  “You aren’t.” I say.

  “Ditto.” Anderson adds.

  The rest of the group murmurs with approval.

  “Good.” Rich continues. “We been to the local pharmacies… they’re cleaned out. So we’ve gotta go farther.”

  “Right.” Anderson adds. “We had some training in emergency scenarios in the Guard… and when people start looting they hit four things… food, drugs, liquor stores, and electronics. Every pharmacy’s been cleaned out, and the hospital didn’t have what we needed. DC cubed was empty… which means the drugs we need are still out there. If they’re not in the drug stores, someone has them. Whoever they are should be easy to find… and they’re gonna want straight-up trades… which means they’re gonna need food or ammo in return. Grey?”

  “Never tell anyone where we’re holding up… and never tell them we have a stockpile. As far
as they know, we keep all our ammo with us at all times. Make them believe it, and they won’t second-guess you.”

  “If they don’t go for it, we’ll cut our losses with alcohol or something less essential…”

  Anderson continues, but I tune him out. What if the group we encountered at the electronics store in Springfield collected the supplies we need? Even if we chose a different car, dressed differently, and sent different people, would they trade with us, shoot us, or hold us to ransom? Did we damn them to the undead when we left last week? Is there anyone else in the group to whom this would occur?

  Or, worse, are we the sort of people we’ve fought and feared, but we have yet to embrace this as a collective? It’s occurred to me before that we’ve left a trail of corpses in our wake, human and undead alike; group at DC cubed may well have peaceably departed had we given them the chance, but we were the inadvertent aggressors in Springfield. Is this the path we’ve forged? Conversely, is Anderson talking out his ass? Do these people actually exist? How do we find them? I try to keep these thoughts off my face when I refocus on what Anderson is saying.

  “…don’t tell them how many of us there are. The women stay behind.” In spite of not having listened to him before this fragment, I can tell the group is perturbed by this assertion, so I feel the need to elaborate. “It wouldn’t surprise me if… they thought of sex as currency… so we need to make sure they don’t think it’s an option.” I can’t be certain if this clarified anything, so I must rely on the notion that what I’ve said at least reinforced Anderson’s statements. Something strikes me, and I open my mouth before I can think to keep it shut.

  “Anderson, you can’t tell them you’re military.”

  “…why?” He asks.

  “If they’re civvies, you don’t wanna wind ‘em up… they might’ve taken weapons from the checkpoints, and you don’t want them thinking you’re out for blood.”